Todd Drake Diamonds

Todd Drake

For fifth-generation Texan Todd Drake, helping people find and create that perfect diamond jewelry piece comes as naturally as his native drawl.

In 1993, the Drake family took a leap of faith, selling their Arlington home to finance Diamond’s by Drake. Little did they know that their passion for helping each and every customer discover the wonder of buying and owning the diamond jewels they dreamed of would make for a constantly growing business. Working alongside his mom and dad, Todd gained an unparalleled education in diamond jewels while bringing his strong financial background to the store. Todd graduated from Texas A&M with a B.A. in business and from UNT with an MBA. He quickly found the joy in providing each customer highly personalized service and the ideal engagement ring, bridal jewelry or priceless heirloom piece.

Within three years, meeting North Texas’ need for the highest-quality diamond jewelry meant moving from a 900-square-foot shop into a new 2000-square-foot store with a highly skilled staff of jewelers and specialists. The new Diamonds by Drake relied on the same ethos that built the business in the first place: quality and honesty. Business multiplied, growing to $1.5 million from $300,000 in just a matter of years. Dallas/Fort Worth residents came to rely on Diamonds by Drake for the highest-quality diamond bridal jewelry, engagement rings and timepieces in North Texas. They rewarded the company’s vision of building trust and loyalty through personalized service and diamond education by returning for diamond jewels that could be passed from generation to generation. Todd enjoyed the admiration of many of his colleagues and in the Dallas area for his business acumen. In 1998, he was named one of the Top 100 Entrepreneurs in Dallas by the Dallas Business Journal.

Today, Todd continues the family tradition of providing his customers with highly personalized service, trustworthy guidance and the finest quality diamonds at Todd Drake Diamonds. He looks forward to moving Todd Drake Diamonds into the future, employing state-of-the-art technology in laser diamond-cutting and 3D CAD-design. Employing a vertically integrated business model, Todd controls every aspect of the process, from marketing to loose-diamond purchasing, ensuring his ever-growing base of loyal customers will always find exactly what they wish for.

Todd cares deeply about the deep meaning and emotional process of diamond selection and knows what matters most to his business: building customer trust through quality and honesty.

Is your love in the air – or is it set in stone?

A diamond is a forever investment. Understanding the four C’s – carat, color, clarity and cut – will ensure that you make a smart selection. While some of these differences are not visible to the naked eye, they do directly impact a diamond’s overall quality and price. When selecting your perfect diamond, keep the following in mind:

Cut

A diamond’s “cut” grading measures whether a stone has maximum brilliance and sparkle– it’s what brings fire to the ice and catches your eye. Cut is different from the shape of the diamond (e.g., princess cut, emerald cut, etc.). The cut evaluation rates the diamond’s angles and brilliance, evaluating the diamond’s proportion, facet arrangement and overall workmanship quality. Diamond cut grades range from “excellent” to “poor” with the excellent rating resembling the ideal cut illustrated below.

Clarity

Virtually all diamonds for sale today include minor irregularities or imperfections, although these imperfections are rarely visible to the naked eye. The minor imperfections in a diamond are caused by the liquid volcanic rock in which a diamond is created. While diamonds are primarily pure carbon, during the crystallization process, other nearby minerals may become trapped within the cooling mass, which in turn affects the diamond’s clarity.

Clarity is measured on a scale with grades running from “flawless” (virtually no imperfections) to “included” (imperfections heavily included). “Pure” diamonds are flawless or internally flawless; these diamonds are exceedingly rare and expensive. VVS-1 and VVS-2 grade diamonds have very, very small inclusions; VS-1 and VS-2 diamond have very small inclusions; SI-1 and SI-2 diamonds have small inclusions; and I-1, I-2 and I-3 diamonds are heavily included. Diamonds are graded under a 10X magnifying glass in good lighting by an experienced grader. The final grade is determined by how easily the grader can see the inclusions and blemishes.

Color

The “color” rating actually refers to the absence of color in a diamond. Like a drop of pure spring water, when it comes to diamonds, the less color, the better. The jewelry industry recognizes the highest quality gemstones by purity of hue. In order to demine the absence or presence of different hues, an experienced diamond grader will compare the diamond to “master stones” using artificial or natural northern daylight. Colorless diamonds are graded either D, E or F. Near colorless diamonds are graded G, H, I or J. Slightly tinted diamonds receive a K, L, M or N rating. Very light yellow diamonds are graded O, P, or Q; light yellow diamonds are graded R, S, or T; yellow diamonds receive a U, V or W grading and light fancy diamonds are graded X, Y or Z.

Carat

The most well-known of the four C’s, “carat” is the unit of measurement for ta diamond’s weight. A carat is subdivided into 100 “points”; for example, a 50-point diamond is “half a carat” or “0.5 ct”. Today, many individuals also equate carat with size. Generally speaking, the higher the carat weight, the larger (and more expensive) the stone. However, color, clarity and cut also affect a diamond’s price; two diamonds of equal carat weight may have very different prices due to these three ratings.